Month: May 2014

Beavers at Chernobyl

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers elsewhere, Environmental May 6, 2014

Duane Nash alerts us to this amazing documentary called “Radioactive Wolves” which aired on Nature PBS in October. It’s about wildlife returning to the former Chernobyl nuclear plant radioactive zone. Guess what species is doing the really heavy lifting? If you remember the speech from Leonard Houston at the State of the Beaver Conference I reprinted here, you won’t be surprised. The power plant was built in a region that was once forest and marshland, and then was reclaimed for crops with canals to feed the population. You’ll never guess how things are working out. Watch until at least 16:00.

Leonard began with

“Within this strangely pastoral setting the animals go about their business, sometimes finding uses for what we’ve left behind. The wolves rise up on their hind legs to peer through the windows of houses, looking for routes to the rooftops, which they use as observation posts for hunting. Eagles build nests in fire towers. Deer, elk, bison and wild horses flourish in abandoned farm fields.

As to the beavers, they have shown an amazing resiliency to some of the worlds most cataclysmic events, in large surpassing sciences understanding of what we call sustainable habitat. Beavers, forced out decades ago when the landscape was engineered for collective agriculture, have already undone much of man’s work converting polluted swamps to free flowing rivers and restoring one of central Europe’s great marshlands.”

I love the shot of the watershed teaming with life, and the long list of species that beavers help. It almost makes me feel like the planet will carry on just fine if we only get the pesky humans out of the way. There is also a good segment on radioactive wolves that you can watch later. Right now we need to talk about this wonderful article discussing the final stages of the Knapdale project.

Something to chew over: will beavers be reintroduced to Scotland?

The Scottish Beaver Trial is a unique and exciting conservation project and if it is a success, beavers could once again become a common sight in our countryside. Caroline Lindsay finds out more.

But how has this reintroduction gone down with the general public? Beavers are known to benefit the environment in many ways: as tree felling, dam building champions, they are what’s known as a keystone species — one which affects the survival and abundance of other wildlife in the community in which it lives.

Beavers create ponds and wetlands, which attract other species such as frogs, toads, water voles, otters, dragonflies, birds and fish, and even help improve water quality. In woodlands, beavers help to stimulate new growth by gnawing on tree stems and coppicing. This helps to breathe new life into tired forests and creates a diverse age range of trees, which greatly benefits woodland management.

That said, a recent YouGov poll has found that 60% of us support the project.

Simon Jones, project manager of the Scottish Beaver Trial, explains: “This is the first formal trial reintroduction of a mammal ever to take place in the UK and it is really positive to see majority support for the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland.

“Separate feedback from several business owners in the Argyll area has also been positive and suggests that the Scottish Beaver Trial has boosted visitor numbers.

Call me an optimist, but with a majority of public support, documented financial benefit and the fact that there are already 150 free beavers in Scotland good sense might just tip the scales. My guess is that there will be a formal decision to reintroduce/tolerate the species with some kind of accommodation ruling that the animals can still be killed if they’re causing a problem, (to mollify the farmers). All in all it’s been a pretty good trial and a great public ad campaign for beavers. Where else did you ever read the word “coppice” besides this website before the Knapdale trial? Now its practically common knowledge.

Oh and finally, kudos to our indispensable Cheryl Reynolds, whose photos were on the CBS website yesterday when International Bird Rescue saved a family of duckings in the Fairfield Sears auto!

Congratulations Cheryl! Now hurry up and help all those baby birds being brought in every day, because you’ll soon need all your free time to devote to taking pictures of baby beavers.

Brace yourselves

heidi08 New Species, Who's Killing Beavers Now? May 5, 2014

There’s some mighty beaver-stupid to talk about today, but I promise to reward you afterwards with something adorable from this morning’s visit. I promise it will be worth it. First the heavy lifting:

Beaver bounty hunter: “tail” it to the jury

He’s a bounty hunter, make no mistake about it. Johnny Vead does not look like Steve McQueen from the old television Western, nor does he look like Dog, the mullet-wearing “brah” of more recent TV fame.

But he is a bounty hunter. Vead doesn’t chase bail jumpers — he chases tail thumpers. Beavers, that is. Brown gold. Symbol of industriousness, determination, good dental hygiene — and Canada. Builder of dams and flooder of fields. The pudgy, flat-tailed, buck-toothed web-footed “water rat” has made it to the top of the Police Jury’s most-wanted list. Since signing on as the Police Jury’s hit man for beavers, Vead has been bringing in a few tails a day. Not enough to put a dent in the “dam” things, but at least he’s gnawing away at their numbers. Should one of his captives protest his innocence, Vead will probably just tell him, “tail it to the jury — the police jury.” (Sorry, I promise that was the last beaver-related pun.) The Police Jury pays Vead $40 per tail. That is all they want or care about. The pelt, the meat and everything else is Vead’s to do with as he wishes.

The police jury is a Lord-of-the-Flies-type legislative and executive body unique to many of Louisiana’s parishes. Avoyelles is about smack dab in the middle of the state, and this parish has made the decision to handle their beaver problems by paying a trapper $40.00 a tail. Apparently the reporter is so excited by his own bounty hunter analogy that he couldn’t be bothered to use paragraphs. Or maybe they’re just outlawed in Louisiana?

Forty dollars a tail.

Since the research reports an average of 5 beavers to a colony that’s 200.00 dollars to get rid of a single family of beavers. For a year. Then another 200.00 to get rid of them again. Not to mention all the fish and ducks they’re going to lose every time they pay resident tax dollars to ruin their creek. A smart person would point out that they could easily take that money and buy parts for a flow device to fix the problem once and for all, and end up with savings for school lunches or senior programs.

At least they’re wasting their money on an expert:,

“Beavers have it made,” Vead said. “They don’t have to go to work, pay bills, go shopping, pay taxes. They don’t have television, computers or telephones. All they have to do is eat and make baby beavers,” he said with hearty laugh.

Yes everyone knows how lazy beavers are. Never doing any work at all. Sitting on their couches and eating chocolate covered willow leaves. Counting off the days until that 364th one comes and the females enter estrus so they can hurry and make babies. Beavers are so lazy. That must be we have that saying,

“Lazy as a beaver”.

____________________________________________

And now the reward. This is footage from the primary dam this morning. I was happy to see the ducks were back. We saw a female with a new clutch of just-hatched ducklings at the secondary dam on Wednesday. Seven! (Four yellow and three brown.) They were so small they looked like beatles, swimming around excitedly. I waited anxiously to see how they’d do. You know how it is with baby ducks. First you count 7, and then you count 5, and then there are three. It’s a dangerous world out there. We saw them again this morning, bigger – more like hamsters now. Check out the view from this morning and count for yourself.

Misunderstood Adolescent Disperser (M.A.D.)

heidi08 Dispersal May 4, 2014

Mad beaver terrorizes Miramichi

The mad beaver of Miramichi wandered the streets this week, slapping its tail on the pavement and chasing one man down the street. And be warned: he’s still out there

The mad beaver of Miramichi, pictured here in a cellphone photo just moments before it turned aggressive, slapping its tail and hissing.

The beaver was a cute curiosity until it got mad. Then it was just plain scary. Terry Furlotte would know; he barely escaped without getting nipped.

He bent down to snap the beaver’s photo, but evidently the beast didn’t like it. “He slapped his tail, turned around with a big old hiss, you could see his teeth there sticking out,” said Furlotte, who was startled. “I had to turn and run away. . . . He chased me down the road.”

This story sickens me. A young beaver slapping the pavement because he thinks it will keep him safe. Like a child pulling the trigger on his finger over and over and saying “bang” and wondering why the attacker doesn’t fall over. Miramichi is east of Maine in New Brunswick, so not the smartest beaver player on the chessboard. But still, Mad?

Only if MAD is an acronym. Standing for

Misunderstood Adolescent Disperser. (M.A.D.)

The reporter in this [sic] tail exaggerated every possible detail or got it wrong, claiming beavers “live” in the dam, and are “kicked out by their parents” at age 2 and that the beaver is still out there and could return any moment. I guess we should be pleased they could be bothered to do a little research for this story.

Though it’s exceedingly rare, beavers have been known to attack people. Last May, a fisherman in Belarus died after being bitten by a beaver he was trying to photograph. An elderly Virginia woman was knocked into a lake and battled a beaver that had bitten her leg for 20 minutes in 2012. She managed to escape.

Sigh. I’m pretty sure there’s a contract clause we never hear about which rewards any reporter that manages to sneak those tidbits in. Luckily the police in Miramachi are way smarter (and kinder) than the reporters.

Once the mad beaver of Miramichi got aggressive, police were called to deal with the animal. They dealt with the scene by cordoning off streets to make sure the rodent didn’t get hit by a car, and waited for the beaver to wander back into the wilderness.

The beaver was allowed to waddle off into the sunset, while Mirachi residents were furiously texting their loved ones, and Mr. Furlotte was spared to live another day. In addition to the Toronto Star, this was also on the Huffington Post. Apparently the incident inspired many frenzied tweets as well.

Honestly, do they have nothing at all to write about in New Brunswick? No scandals or crime or evidence of climate change? Hmm, maybe it’s just things they’d rather not think about.

New Brunswick barrelling toward bankruptcy, analyst warns

We’ll follow up with that story soon. Now let’s get back to that update on the mad beaver!

OH and Happy Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you!

Tick, tick, tick…

heidi08 Beaver-themed merchandise, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 3, 2014

How good are you at waiting for things? You know, that feeling when the good thing is so close you can almost touch it, but you have to refrain for a little bit longer. Maybe you know that lump under the Christmas tree is your new bike and your parents say to stay away from it. Or you know the cookies will be better when they’ve cooled but you can’t help burning the roof of your mouth anyway. Maybe your license is coming in the mail any minute but you can’t stop calling yourself Dr. before it arrives. Or maybe that’s just me.

I bet you can already guess how good I am at it. This is maddening. Ripples are starting to trickle in from the PBS Nature episode by Jari Osborne, and I am chomping at the bit. Apparently time is unwilling to pass any faster just because I want it to. Who knew?

Beavers never make the list of cuddliest animals and they’re often considered more pest than problem solver. But it turns out that the industrious rodents may be true “eco-heroes.” On May 14, PBS Nature premieres Leave it to Beavers, a documentary about North American beavers, their habits, history and role as one of nature’s top infrastructure engineers. Filmmaker Jari Osborne tells MetroFocus host Rafael Pi Roman the behind-the-scenes story of the new documentary, and how the beaver “could possibly be the key to saving our world’s fresh water supplies.”

Jari’s interview on Metro Focus that she recorded Wednesday will air May 8th and I’ll post the link so you can watch it online. Her radio interview on The Animal House from the same day should be downloadable in a day or two and I’ll pass that along also. In the meantime I have already begged a copy of the Nature DVD for the silent auction.

Are we surprised?

This is going to be a long week. I better rest up. Luckily I just found the perfect place.

UPDATE

heidi08 Beavers May 2, 2014

Just in case you received an alarming message from me, I’m not actually in Italy and haven’t lost my passport or credit cards. I am fine and spent the day changing passwords and accounts. Please delete that message, don’t click on any link it contains, and run a virus check to make sure you weren’t given a surprise. I’m sorry for the confusion!